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sfcrazy writes "The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, once said, 'If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.' Microsoft yesterday released one of its cash cows, Microsoft Office, for Android. Since Microsoft has a very vague idea of what users want and is suffering from lock-in, the app is just an Android front end of Office 365 and is accessible only by the paid users. There are already quite a lot of office suites available on Android including Office Pro, QuickOffice and KingSoft, so Microsoft will have to struggle there. Still it's a Microsoft core application coming to Linux. So, it looks like Linus has won."

Linus isn't really linux by itself, he just had a critical part to play. The more accurate question would be "is Microsoft losing relevance and marketshare?" to which the answer is yes, and not really a surprise.

For the first time in a very long time, Microsoft isn't a "Windows" company. For a brief moment, there was someone who realized that in order to be relevant moving forward, Microsoft will have to stop being a "windows" company. Let see if it stays a "second tier" Office App on Android or if Microsoft makes it world class. That will be the true sign that Microsoft has or has not stopped being a Windows company.

They also have a games division, a phone division, and a bunch of other stuff... but the fact is that most of their money is either directly made from Windows, or from a product anchored by their Windows desktop monopoly. I suspect that even their Mac sales are mostly from people who need to stay compatible with their Windows-using colleagues/customers.

Word is the least interesting part of Office. It solves a problem that few people have any more: editing a document for printing. Word was important during the era of "desktop publishing", starting when home printers became decent, and ending when people stopped handing around printed paper as a way to communicate.

The important Office products are PowerPoint and Excel. There are no good competitors for either. And while I wouldn't want to edit either on my phone, being able to project a slideshow or spreadsheet from one's phone will be really big deal for years to come.

>The important Office products are PowerPoint and Excel. There are no good competitors for either.

There are many perfectly serviceable competitors for PowerPoint and Excel, both free and proprietary.

What there is no effective competition for is Visio. Visio is far and away the most effective technical drawing tool. Nothing comes close. It is the reason I use Office. I can write words and make slides on any platform, but I can't get the smartshape automation of Visio anywhere else.

There are many perfectly serviceable competitors for PowerPoint and Excel, both free and proprietary.

People who live and die by the PowerPoint sales presentation don't agree. I can't stand slideware myself, so I don't have a strong opinion, but people I know who make and show presentations all day (and have good reasons to use non-MS products) say there's just no comparison. SmartArt automation is a big part of it, I'm guessing.

Similarly, unless you just need a spreadsheet calculator, I haven't seen anything that stands with Excel - certainly the online spreadsheets like the Google Docs one don't come anywhere close. I use Excel as my drawing program (if you make the cells square, it's great for the kind of drawing you do on graph paper), which nothing else seems good at, but mostly there's this whole culture of "spreadsheet programmers" who only know Excel/VBA (seriously, no other languages or training, but spend days on VBA programs).

You should see SuddenView. It's almost a paint program for words; each line is its own format, among other things, and its _fast_. It's the most radical text editor I've seen. Designed and written by Rod Coleman originally for the Atari ST. For anyone who does a lot of writing, especially for a living, it can be one hell of a helpful tool. I met Rod at an Atarifest in '91 where he demo'ed SuddenView, and yes, consider this a plug, if you want, because for what it is and what it

Disagree. They've been losing relevance for a long time, and we're noticing now that they're struggling to find any relevance. They did have a lot of relevance to lose, as they squandered away what relevance Windows had, trying for markets they were weak in (server) while neglecting markets they were strong in (desktop), all while continuing to be so far behind the curve they just don't get what's going on until it's years too late (mobile).

They might have been a strong player in the game console market, but then they pulled an XBone.

Business is still pretty big, but with Windows losing day-to-day familiarity with users, their last bastion is going to erode quickly as users start asking "why can't we use something else?" I fully expect them to throw billions at trying to find relevance for years to come, though. This all might be foreshadowed by RIM and Blackberry: originally king at business, trying to fit in elsewhere, disrupted by technology they didn't grasp, falling behind, throwing money at trying to stay relevant, while everyone else wants to move on.

True. Even if they do lose the lock on the non-Apple desktop and laptop market, they may still be able to do an IBM and reinvent themselves.

We'll finally know that Microsoft is at the tipping point when the Walmart, Futureshop, Best Buy, Staples, etc all devote floor space to non-Mac and non-Windows laptops and desktops (e.g. Linux, Chromebook, etc) and its common for businesses that currently buy both Macs and Windows start buying these non-Mac and non-Windows laptops and desktops.

This all might be foreshadowed by RIM and Blackberry: originally king at business, trying to fit in elsewhere, disrupted by technology they didn't grasp, falling behind, throwing money at trying to stay relevant, while everyone else wants to move on.

RIM, whether they like it or not, is transitioning into a services company. They made an incredibly shrewd move with the Mobile Device Management platform formerly Blackberry Fusion, now rebranded Universal Device Service. They allowed existing Blackberry customers to migrate licenses for all of 2013 for free to the new platform and use those licenses to manage not only Blackberry 10 devices (naturally) but also iPhone/iPad and Android devices. This made an incredibly strong cost/benefit argument for existing customers faced with increasing pressure to allow corporate iPhones and Androids to just keep using Blackberry to manage them. This helps Blackberry (the company) ensure a consistent revenue stream from MDM licensing even if you're using a competitors product.

The switch to ActiveSync for messaging will also help take the load off of their servers, allowing them to shrink their infrastructure saving even more money, and whether the phone ends up being popular or not (it's a pretty solid device, just very few apps as yet), they have a viable path forward for the future. They were already a trusted name in the MDM market with a great deal of penetration with their old devices. The leveraged that pretty hard and I think it will be their saving grace going forward.

It's like asking what would happen if the oceans started draining [xkcd.com]? Yeah, it would eventually devastate the oceans, but there's so much water there that it takes forever. For Microsoft to fold up shop would take at least a decade of consistently bad decisions, and even then it would almost have to be willful.

For modern examples of tech companies in decline, consider Blackberry, formerly Research in Motion. Everybody says they are dead in the water, but if you look at it, they still have billions in cash,

Even VMware is using it. Not to mention normal linux server stuff. Windows servers fall into two categories your has to be on windows stuff and windows only shops. The latter are getting less and less.

FYI - HyperV may be making inroads, but mostly because it gets sold with most all Windows Server licenses if buyers are not careful. It's a bundling thing and you have to pay attention to not get it if you don't want it. Don't forget, HyperV came about only after MS bought VirtualPC to try to get into the Virtualization business - after Linux already had KVM, Xen, and several other viable options.

Comparatively, VMware is considered the market master when it comes to Virtual Environments and they've got t

Precisely. Linux as a kernel has "won," but Linux as a desktop OS is still far behind. And I think that's what Linus was talking about at the time, Linux on the desktop.

Android is "Linux" to approximately the same extent that MacOS X is "BSD" or "Mach," and I don't think anyone imagines that BSD has "won" because of Office for Mac or that there are 900K iOS apps out there. I think it's much more appropriate to say that if anyone "won" here it's Android, but I think that Linus is smart enough not to try to take credit for what Google has done on top of "his" kernel.

That's like saying the car's engine is not important as the user is interacting with the steering wheel and pedals. Besides, I bet the user interface elements of Android could also be "replaced fairly easy". Anything can. But Linux plays many important roles in the background of an Android system.

Sure, but what most car users will care about is that there is an engine, not exactly which engine it is or how it's constructed. Some car users might even not know that there is an engine in the car.

I think that this car analogy isn't really that good. More people probably know the basics of how an engine works and why it's needed, than the people that know what an operating system kernel is. Also, some people will buy a car depending on which engine it has but few will buy a phone or tablet based on the k

Well, in theory that's true of *any* Linux distribution. Replacing the kernel is not "fairly easy" though. Sure it can be done: Debian are attempting a port that replaces Linux with BSD, for instance. But they've only got as far as a preview release. Moving a whole operating system from kernel to another is not easy.

Uh, why? Where can I read more about this? Sure, there are some things about the BSD kernel I admire (I think its a hell of a lot more straitforward to configure) but I'm curious to know their reasoning.

Correct me if I'm wrong (please), but with the recent kernel check-ins, Linux is Android on the ring 0 (or whatever equivalent ARM uses) level. In a twisted way, Android revs are just Linux distros that are specialized, and have special drivers for the SoC stuff that is on phones and devices.

Absolute nonsense. Dalvik and other Android components have been heavily optimized within the Linux kernel and userspace. Yes, I'm sure parts of Android probably are portable, but considering Linux's appeal both for its available source code and its licensing, why would Google even want to waste enormous resources moving it to another OS?

Downfall? Adroid is a "fragment" of the Linux community that has snowballed into a runaway success that now dwarfs the adoption of Linux on the conventional PC desktop and may yet dwarf the number of Windows installs globally. This would not have happened had google not been allowed to take Linux in a different direction and run with it.

Linux already "won" - his goal was to create a Unix-like OS and it became incredibly popular. As far as I am aware he has never shown much interest in getting MS Office for it, or for market share.

Nice try creating animosity where there is none. The summary is full of typos and weasel-words. I'm not huge MS fan but the summary is full of bias in an attempt to turn a mildly interesting story into a flamewar or hatefest.

Linux is bigger and more important than 'beating' Microsoft. Sure, many of us go through the puerile stage of trying to win people over from Windows, but that usually ends when maturity teaches us two things: first, to be content having free as in freedom software we can use; second, not to volunteer ourselves for tech support by telling giving friends and relatives unsolicited advice to make significant changes to their computers.

Er what? Although Minix was not open source at the time it was free to university and academics (Torvalds was a student at the time). Torvalds based his orignal Linux design on minix but it had major differences like a monolithic kernel. He posted it as a "free minix-like" on forums to describe his kernel. I don't think his goal was not to pay for it (as he didn't have to) but to make one himself. He did use minix as the OS while building Linux until it became mature enough on its own.

Linux the kernel is the core of both Android the operating system and GNU/Linux the operating system. If one gets pedantic, then technically Microsoft Office for Android satisfies the argument that it's supported on an OS running Linux the kernel, but when most people use "Linux", they're not referring to the kernel, but the operating system with all of its GNU and POSIX stuff.

Stallman is probably more interested in this move than Linus is. On the one hand I imagine he is annoyed that MS Office is proprietary and the dominant format, but on the other hand he must be pleased that GNU code and free software in general is now powering so many devices. In fact the majority of computers and complex embedded systems are running free software now, in part.

Linux the kernel is the core of both Android the operating system and GNU/Linux the operating system. If one gets pedantic, then technically Microsoft Office for Android satisfies the argument that it's supported on an OS running Linux the kernel, but when most people use "Linux", they're not referring to the kernel, but the operating system with all of its GNU and POSIX stuff.

So, this is a win in the same sense that the Spruce Goose flew.

If you're really being pedantic, and really want to start the flame war that you seem to be encouraging, "Linux" is the name of both the kernel and the original operating system, and some other organization has attempted to rename it to put their own brand in it more recently. Someday we may know it at MIT/BSD/GNU/Canonical/RHEL/Linux if that trend keeps up. Or we could just call it what the person who created it called it, and if GNU wants a GNU/whatever OS, they can release a distro with their name on it.

Linux the kernel is the core of both Android the operating system and GNU/Linux the operating system. If one gets pedantic, then technically Microsoft Office for Android satisfies the argument that it's supported on an OS running Linux the kernel, but when most people use "Linux", they're not referring to the kernel, but the operating system with all of its GNU and POSIX stuff.

Actually he's won using that definition too. The Linux kernel has virtualization code [arstechnica.com] from Microsoft already.

Naw, Hughes flew the Goose once then shelved both it and himself for the rest of his life. Linus, although living in a small house in Portland (or wherever) and only coming out to rant at his developers like a maniac, actually gets out and about to shout at the world, and Linux is flying in shops all over the world, so, no, its not at all like the Spruce Goose.

It seems silly to conflate this with Microsoft making products for Linux.

This is just an app that's a wrapper for a web app. The same web app you can already run on Desktop Linux.

Besides which, last I checked this wasn't a free webapp and was, in fact, a way for Microsoft to milk more money out of companies that would have otherwise only had to pay Microsoft for each Office license once. Now it's a monthly fee.

If anything, this benefits MS. They've hopefully learned and adapted to:
Use semi-monopoly to force stupid crap that customers don't want down people's throats = less money, benefits the competition by losing sales
Give people what the market research says they actually want = more money, hurts the competition by losing them sales

If this is the beginning of them pulling their heads out of their asses, this is not good for Linux at all.

Android Inc has shown what many of us have always said. If the OSS moment got around to making user friendly easy to use stuff, it will take off. All your forking and hiding behind the command line are just killing you. Installs are getting better, much better, but still the amount of work someone has to do is too steep a learning curve for your Average joe to be able to setup and maintain a general Linux system. In the old days it used to be said someone with an Average IQ could EITHER remember the road ru

... more likely, since this is just a rehash of what's available for Windows and iOS, it's more substatively a reflection of Microsoft's pathological fear of change, driven by the company being managed by individuals unwilling to confront their own mortality. "Hope I die before I get old..."

What you imply is that they released an office suite for Android, when in fact, they merely released an Android client for Office 365 users.

As much as you might care to think one is pretty much the same as the other, you would be wrong. This app is not for editing office documents on your mobile device. It is for Office 365 users to view items synced to their cloud....nothing more. It cannot even access items on your mobile device...

I hope they didn't put to much effort into that convoluted pile. If you actually need to edit office docs and must do it from a tablet or can't get to a desktop, I"ve had good results with the kingsoft office suite, it is quite amazing for free.

A well executed decoy by the allies of Linus succeeded to lure MS to make a wrong move after about 20 years in this epic battle! The ambush took MS by surprise because of the lack in their intelligence about the quotes of Linus. Whew I'm glad it's over!

So what's in the future of Slashdot after all this? The currently still low burning Distro Wars?

The whole idea of 'winning' or 'losing' is misguided. The whole idea of marketshare being an indicator of quality is also misguided.
I am an admitted Microsoftie. I'm on a Surface tablet right now. My Windows phone is sitting next to me. I've got an Xbox, subscription to Office 365, etc. I'm all in.
The phone market has really taught me a lot. I used to carry an iPhone, but I was never really impressed with it. Eventually I switched to Windows and I was much happier (with my phone). A lot of people look at my phone as a lesser product. They'll send me links to articles predicting the demise of Windows Phone, or articles describing the horrible marketshare.
But guess what? None of those articles...or the low marketshare...or the possible impending demise make me think less of my phone. Not at all. They have no impact on how I feel about the technology in my pocket.
So the point is- I feel that others should do the same. Ignore the marketshare (unless you are an investor or developer) ignore the articles written by the hacks (Motley Fool is determined to bash Microsoft 30 times per day) and just use the technology in the way it was intended.
Don't get emotionally invested in someone else's business. Microsoft put (a decidedly strange version of) Office on Android because they want the money. It has nothing to do with either satisfying, or challenging the fanboys. It has to do with money. That is what companies do.
Apple had a horrible marketshare in the desktop OS market. It didn't mean they had an inferior product, just a less popular one. Getting emotional about this is silly.

microsoft is trying to force everyone onto it and it will only take one major system failure for people to abandon office. The cloud is just mainframes all over again and the problems have not changed. No one cares about your data as much as you do.

Microsoft is pushing for subscription services because they realised their greatest competitor is themselves from five years ago. Look how long it took to get people off of XP. They reached the point where their software was 'good enough' that no-one has a compelling reason to upgrade to a new version, and the loss of a perpetual upgrade cycle ruins the whole business model.

Do you own a truck? If you don't and don't want one you wouldn't tell Ford and Ram(Dodge) what they should put in their trucks.

Excel is the Grep\AWK\Sed of the enterprise\business world. Not all of it, but a large percentage. The fact of the matter is there is a whole lot in your life that was built with the assistance of Word, Excel, and hell even PowerPoint. You think the construction company that built the building your in uses VIM to manage there shit.

Slashdot in general does not get this. I'm sure there are plenty of desktop support guys on here who do. Google docs is great an I use them all the time, but it's a tinker toy to some of the more advanced features in Excel that most people haven't even heard of.

Throw together a pivot table with a slicer and then see me in the morning. Take a look at stock symbol DATA for tableu...there is a world outside of compilers, web servers, and VIM people.

You can't tell me you haven't heard a iPad guy tell you he wishes he had Excel on there.

MS has done okay with the XBox. I think the phone and tablet is a catch 22 for them. If they don't do it people will wonder why. If they do people will wonder why.

This is nothing more than a front end to Microsoft's vendor-lock-in engine running in the cloud.

.You pay a $10 a month fee to have Microsoft control your access to your own documents. While I have not used it, I can not imagine being able to do anything on a mobile phone via the web that would be worth the price. And don't even think of trying to install it on a tablet, you are not allowed. Microsoft probably thinks that a person with a tablet might actually expect to be able to do something with it, and wanting money for nothing they thought it easier to just deny tablets. Like that's really going to make me want to buy one of their tablets. Dream On!

Requirements:
* A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to use this app. Qualifying plans include: Office 365 Home Premium, Office 365 Small Business Premium, Office 365 Midsize Business, Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4 (Enterprise and Government), Office 365 Education A3 and A4, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 University, and Office 365 trial subscriptions
NOTE: If you don’t have an Office 365 subscription, you can buy Office 365 Home Premium from http://www.office.com./ [www.office.com] With Office 365 Home Premium, you also get the latest version of Office for up to 5 PCs, Macs, and Windows tablets - and an additional 20 GB of SkyDrive cloud storage and Skype world minutes***.

Doing a poll of the general population around me, not a single one of them uses any office suite on their phones.

Now, it's a biased sample. Almost half are iphones, almost half are androids, and there are a couple "dumb" call phones. None of them have a Windows 8 phone. (I like to call that 'Biased towards reality'.)

Most of us get Microsoft Office files. But the email reader either opens the files natively or can shunt it to a simple document viewer to open the files in a read-only mode.

The point is that having office (either Microsoft Office or any other office suite) on a cell phone is overkill. Even on a tablet computer. It's not until you have a real keyboard (and, likely, a mouse) are you going to make "office-type" documents.

Linux maybe the kernel, but the whole point of why Richard Stallman never had any luck persuading others with his then very valid point that it should be GNU/Linux, was Linux was such a important, significant, and difficult part of the OS that naming it anything else was stupid (and plain just not as catchy).

The fact that it is used together with a whole host of userlands....Android perhaps the most viable and widespread hitting 900,000,000 install base is simply an aside. Its set to dethrone Microsoft this year.

The fact that I benefit on a GNU/Linux desktop from the work google do elsewhere in their Chrome/Android OS is the wonderfulness of Linux's choice of GPL as a tit for tat licence.

I think the interesting case is increasingly Apple, not Microsoft. (Though whether Cook can keep momentum is an important question. If he's Apple's Ballmer, well, we may well yet have the year of linux as a primary workstation.*) What does the BSD kernel really mean? In the academic space, it means that for many domains Microsoft is becoming increasingly irrelevant, because so many of the good tools (and the tools you don't have to pay for) are coming out of a unix world, and can be made to run on Macs with

I'd agree. But Android isn't getting there. Its kind of worse. If our computing ethos is to simply change one moniker (Microsoft) for (Google) and revert to a single user OS (windows 95) >> Android - and to go back to pretty much the worst security landscape imaginable (Hi Android circa 2013) - I'm sat here trying to establish that I've not just seen us move totally side ways and not forward.